But his current project, a just-published book entitled “Hook: A Memoir,” is, as its title states, about Horton and his life — and he can’t really talk about his life at this point without talking about prison.

The story that led to his current life as a respected author and educator here began its upward trajectory behind bars at Roxbury — a place he ended up in after quickly tumbling from a student at respected Howard University in Washington, D.C. to a homeless drug addict, international cocaine smuggler and ultimately, a convicted felon.

Hook was Horton’s street name.

His story, detailed in the book just released by Augury Books is far from typical and he doesn’t profess to be “of the street” — he grew up comfortably with two parents who were college-educated teachers.

Associate Professor of English Randall Horton signed his book, Hook: A Memoir, for one of his students, Gabi Brassell, at the University of New Haven Campus Store on 12/1/2015.

Associate Professor of English Randall Horton signed his book, Hook: A Memoir, for one of his students, Gabi Brassell, at the University of New Haven Campus Store on 12/1/2015.

Photo: Arnold Gold — New Haven Register

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Hook: A Memoir, by Associate Professor of English Randall Horton is on sale at the University of New Haven Campus Store on 12/1/2015.

Hook: A Memoir, by Associate Professor of English Randall Horton is on sale at the University of New Haven Campus Store on 12/1/2015.

Photo: Arnold Gold — New Haven Register

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University of New Haven professor wants teens to know one mistake doesn’t end their lives

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But what Horton, 54, a resident of Sugar Hill in the northern end of New York City’s Harlem section, has to say has plenty of relevance, particularly to youths who may need to know that they can stumble and recover, turn their lives around and do something positive.

“It’s not so much my stories but the stories that surround my stories” that are important,” said Horton, a native of Alabama. “I do have a story to tell. It’s not that I was looking to tell my story or glorify my story. It’s more that I understand” that he turned his life around in an atypical way, and the opportunities he had along the way.

“My whole thing is, it’s not a one-way street ... especially for young people,” said Horton, recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature, among other accolades.

“If you make mistakes, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the end of your life...” Horton said. “I want them to understand that I am that construction of someone who was able to turn it around.”

One reason he wanted to tell his story was to pass on “the things I was able to do to turn around in my life and lead a productive life.”

“We as young people still make terrible decisions ... You hope that kids get it, but sometimes your kids don’t get it — and I was one of those kids that didn’t get it,” Horton said.

The book is about “the resiliency of the human spirit, the ability to come back from the ashes, to resurrect oneself from the ashes ... Just sort of a microsmic look at a person in a situation where they don’t belong,” Horton said.

In prison, “people would ask me, ‘You don’t come from where we come from. Why are you here? Go home!’” he said.

As a university professor who was able to bounce back from doing time in prison, he knows he’s in a very small universe.

For Horton, the tumble from student to drug addict, drug dealer and felon happened very quickly, he said.d

“One day I was at college and a freshman ... and within two years, my whole life was somewhere else ...” he said. “I would have never predicted in my freshman year that by my junior year, I would have spiraled into something as far as I did.”

For a variety of reasons, “I couldn’t slow down until I went to prison ...” Horton said. But “I don’t claim a great miscarriage of justice or anything else,” he said. He said he deserved to be where he ended up.

The book is told in two voices — letters between Horton and woman identified in the book as Lxxxx — because she was still in prison at the time it was written — but whom Horton identified in a recent interview at UNH, where he was reading portions of his work, as Linda Perez.

“We deconstruct society. We talk about literature” and “the prison industrial complex ... and I talk about the system — and it becomes a critique of the system from someone who’s on the inside,” Horton said.

Horton also holds a Master’s Degree from Chicago State University and a Bachelor’s Degree from University of the District of Columbia.

Horton in his non-literary life is engaged to woman named Ruby.

He said he never really knew he could write until he started doing it after going to prison. While he was awaiting trial in Montgomery County, Maryland, he entered a program called Jail Addiction Services for Substance Abusers in hopes of getting a shorter jail sentence.

The writing came as part of a group therapy session for which he was required to write essays every night, some of which found their ways into the book.